A Cult sci-fi comedy fom Uzbekistan, produced in 1991-1992. Uzbekistan had a reputation for its films when it was still part of the USSR. The international success of Abdulladzhan, or dedicated to Steven Spielberg (1992) proved that the Uzbek film industry was still viable even after its independence. The country's reputation as one of the centers of the Middle Asian film industry is well deserved. Considering that Musakov’s Abdulladzhan (1991) was dedicated to Steven Spielberg, we might suggest that these four boys embody nothing more complicated than a conflict of youthful innocence with some ominous threat—the basic workings of E.T. (1982) or War of the Worlds (2005), say. That threat, however, is best understood not through vague nationalism or warmed-over socialism, but through the other reference-point of Abdulladzhan—Tarkovskii’s Stalker (1980). Musakov leaves his boys in a simplified radiance so bright and so overexposed that it no longer looks like the skies of sunny Tashkent, but a disturbing, borderless luminosity to match the flat tonal range of Stalker’s “Zone.” Our Uzbek boys are nowhere in particular; this is a broader domain than anything international. Even the final scene of the sequel does not help us to chart their location or future with any confidence. Lola approaches the banker’s son (Bakhtiar, played by Musakov’s actual son); he is now a lowly mechanic, following his father’s loss of employment, and he turns around to see Lola in an empty car park. Neither character is smiling.